Best friend Mike, known around these parts as Bookpimp, recently turned 50. To mark the milestone, he had planned a gathering of his three best buds, which techinically is two best friends and a brother. The original celebration got axed by the pandemic but was salvaged in late 2022 when things started normalizing. Months before the gathering, I reached out to the other two invitees, unbeknowst to Michael, and suggested we each write something about Mike, celebrating him. Below is my contribution and what I read at our dinner table at our weekend gathering.

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THE BEGINNING
the first sound i ever heard come from michael nelson engelbrecht was a chortle. and it was, as you would guess, at my expense. our film criticism teacher just insulted me in front of the class mocking that i was asking yet another question in our summer course. it seems he was of the mind that summer classes should be a question-free affair. after the public jibe and the audible chortle, i turned to see the source. one row behind me in the stadium style seats and six chairs down, a student leaned far back in his chair, holding his crossed leg in place with one hand and cradling a 32 ounce sweet tree, rested on his chest and straw in mouth, in his other. his eyes said to me, you would have laughed to if you were in my spot. my only consolation was it looked like he might have spit up a little sweet tea on his concert tee through this unexpected laugh.

after class, walking to my car, i heard someone calling after me. i turned to see the chortler hustling up behind me, an overfilled backpack pulled up high on one shoulder. i wondered what was about to take place as i was confident he wasn’t running me down to apologize.

MIKE
what games do you have?

TROY
what?

MIKE
for your gameboy? what games do you have?

it turns out we each had the practice of playing gameboy in the minutes before class. i was not aware of this as michael sat behind me. but i was aware it was the mark of someone not especially deep with friends or social graces. no one over-hearing, or participating in, this innocuous exchange would predict it would be the start of a multi-decade friendship, one of the greatest either of us would ever know. but it was. as we walked on towards our cars michael asked what i thought of frazier, our film teacher. i gave my two cents. i asked michael the same and he said “i like him. he’s kooky.”

kooky. this would be the first of many michael-isms i would come to know. the next would be dutch, his brother. his name is mark but everyone calls him dutch. and my introduction to dutch was about as complimentary as it was with his brother. we first met in the kitchen of their home and dutch lit up at seeing me like we were long-time pals. though it wasn’t me that got his eyes to open wide. it was my shiny-styled hair which he pretended to gently stroke with his hand while saying an elongated, “niiiiceee hair.” Before i had time to react, dutch went to lean on the kitchen counter and made a flamboyant flailing motion with his full body implying that all the goop in my hair just caused him to fall with great flourish. oh those engelbrecht boys do know how to make a fella feel special.

then there was purple hat. this tattered, logoless, five-dollar hat was as dear to michael a fraying woobie is to an insecure three year old. and michael had this article-free way of addressing purple hat (look even i’m doing it now) that always caught your ear. this translated to hearing things like:
- wait, i forgot purple hat.
- i’m sure glad i got purple hat today
- mom! i can’t find purple hat, where is it? to which she might reply, i don’t know where you left purple hat Michael. you should keep better track of it.

thankfully, purple-hat never met black-light. i worry for the neon spectacle that marriage would have produced.

BEST SEMESTER EVER
never before had i fallen into such a quick and comfortable rapport with someone. hours flew by effortlessly. what all we talked about i can hardly remember but i do recall more than a few late night drives home fully crossing the charlotte landscape after spending a late evening at michael's. there were also more than a few nights spent at the foundry. here is where we first publicly heard the impressive range of mike’s singing pipes at one of the earliest karaoke scenes around.

and after our meeting there was a lot less gameboy as we spent lots of time between our classes hanging out and running our baked potato scam at the prospector cafe which if memory serves went like this—a plain baked potato was, let’s say, two dollars. a loaded baked potato with cheese, sour cream, and spring onions was twice that. so one of us would get a plain and the other would get a loaded and heap on enough toppings for three or four potatoes. we would then surreptitiously meet at a table and divide the bounty between our spuds. the prospector never knew what hit it.

POST-CHARLOTTE
six months after our meeting, i moved back to st louis and marty. since both of us have left places before, michael having done so an impressive number of times, i don’t think either of us had great expectations for our future. but what wasn’t part of my math was the sort of pen-pal michael would be. i mean i guess i should have had a sense but in my defense i don’t think anyone could have predicted what was to come. I can’t say how long it took for the first parcel to arrive but when it did, you definitely knew who it was from, and not because the return address would say, michael n englebrecht of Kirchenbaum Drive but because it would say:

Endo’s Male Order Asian Grooms
You’ll never be left at the alter with an Endo groom

or

The Wayne Newton personality clinic and hair-styling salon.
“Wayne says, ‘For only pennies a day, you too, can have charm and style”

or

The Carolina impotence Clinic
Our prices aren’t stiff, our clients are.

or what is easily my personal favorite:

Chains, whips and things with sharp tips
We supply those whose favorite colors are black and blue

nearly all of these included some sort of graphic, haphazardly affixed to the corner. wether it was a head shot of wayne newton or a photo of a guy spanking a flaming red pair of naked buttocks there was almost always accompanying imagery. to be honest, i’m amazed some of these got delivered—and i wonder how many might not have made it to my doorstep. and that was just on the outside. it would be equally impossible to predict what you might find inside the bursting manilla.

it could be anything from:

• an hourly journal breaking down his school/work week, rich with commentary.
• a partially completed screen play
• a top-ten list which was always far more bawdy than anything you’d ever get from letterman
• when he finished his ten years at uncc, he sent me his school id, which is still a cherished possession.

and it was during this period that wiziwig formatting came to be. michael revelled in this new freedom. in a passage about registering for classes, he managed to reference both of our penises, and when he mentioned mine, the print was so small it could hardly be read, and when mentioning his, the print barely fit on the page.

these routine packages were the initial drip that kept our friendship alive. but this commitment then led to cross-country treks to visit one another. sometimes we would meet halfway (nashville. memphis) and sometimes we’d make the full pilgrimage to the others home. no trip lacked memorable moments:

• Wether it was getting snowed in with no money
  
• getting crippled in a bird attack
  
• spilling a full soda in my new car
  
• debating who between the two of us needed a nap more
  
• covering the food bill for the visiting person (i'm confident we can all agree who got the short end of that arrangement)
  
• bug-infestations at mallon-manor
  

if marty participated in any way, we were certain to run her to the brink with either our flatulence, singing, or incessant movie line exchanges.

THE REPLACEMENTS
then i started hearing of this guy buddy james. it’s odd being jealous of someone you never met, but i could not have been more envious of all the time buddy james got to spend with michael.

then came christine. on this one i couldn’t be happier for my friend. for michael it was never a question of if but when. and there never was a person more deserving of having a girlfriend/fiance/wife than the guy who helped countless others navigate those troubled relationship waters.

FAMILY LIFE
so then we were husbands and then fathers. i have always been impressed with michael’s dedication to his family. i’ve come to learn we can never know what kind of spouse or parent people will become until they are in the throes of it. i’ve seen lots of good people fail under the endlessness of it and i’ve seen some struggling folks finally find their stride in marriage and parenthood. a consistent and telling marker of this with michael is anytime we are talking, wether it has been for five or ninety minutes, if christine calls, he immediately interrupts whatever is happening between us and tells me he has to go because christine needs him. this is how it should be and i respect and admire the priority he gives to his family.

my children know him as uncle mike and they have heard many, many uncle mike stories. they have even seen the vhs movies he made in his twenties. very recently, i watched my aleo, who is an aspiring film-maker himself, taking in mike’s movies with such rapt attention. two months after that showing alex announced that he would be making his first film. and he did and it was awesome. i am convinced that mike's foul play movies inspired aleo to action. it is only appropriate given all the impact and influence michael has had on me, that his unique and creative spirit would also influence my children.

BROTHERS
so in time, our recreational and random boondoggles were replaced largely by weddings, babies, and funerals. and our meandering conversations turned to talk of jobs and children. but each and every time we do talk, no matter how much time or life has passed, it is like we are again hunkered over our prospector cafe table sharing in the easy comfortability we have always known.

i’m an adopted, only child with one living parent (a parent i’m not close to). i grew up on the other side of the country from all of my relatives and moved away from my hometown a month after my high school graduation. all of this means that when i take an honest stock of the people on this planet i have a meaningful relationship with, children aside, i've never sniffed leaving one hand. thus i don't know that you will ever be able to comprehend OR that i will ever be able to express to you what your friendship has meant to me. so thank you for laughing at me that day in frazier's class, thank you for running me down afterwards, thank you for not giving up on me even after i moved away, and thank you for being the closest thing to a brother i will ever know.

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PHOTO NOTE: During this visit, mike and I returned to the college campus where we met. It was, as you'd expect, mightily different. It took us some time to find our old lunch haunt, but we did. And when we did, the table we most occupied in our college days (pictured above), sat empty for us, as if expecting our return.